Microsoft released some updates for Visual Studio 2010 today to MSDN subscribers with the public release on March 10th. The following updates are out today:

Visual Studio 2010 SP1:

You can learn more about how Microsoft is improving Visual Studio 2010 on Jason Zander's blog and Scott Guthrie's blog.

TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack:

Also available for Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN subscribers via Download Center today is the TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack.  Integration between Project Server and Team Foundation Server enables teams to work more effectively together using Visual Studio, Project, and SharePoint and coordinates development between teams using disparate methodologies, such as waterfall and agile, via common data and metrics.

Visual Studio Load Test Feature Pack:

Available to all Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscribers.  With this feature pack, you can simulate as many virtual users as you need without having to purchase additional Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 licenses.  For more information regarding this new Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN benefit, visit the Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 page.

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2:

Visual Studio LightSwitch offers a simple way to develop line of business applications for the desktop and cloud.  In the coming weeks, Microsoft will make available Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2.  With this second beta, Microsoft will also enable you to build line of business applications that target Windows Azure and SQL Azure. 

Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC 3 earlier this morning at the CodeMash conference. ASP.NET MVC 3 is a framework for developing highly testable and maintainable Web applications by leveraging the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model. ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).

The installation package includes templates and tools for Visual Studio 2010 to increase productivity when writing ASP.NET MVC applications. For example, the Add View dialog box takes advantage of customizable code generation (T4) templates to generate a view based on a model object. The default project template allows the developer to automatically hook up a unit-test project that is associated with the ASP.NET MVC application.

Because the ASP.NET MVC framework is built on ASP.NET 4, developers can take advantage of existing ASP.NET features like authentication and authorization, profile settings, localization, and so on.

A ASP.NET MVC 3 Application Upgrader has also been released on Codeplex. This standalone application upgrades ASP.NET MVC 2 applications to ASP.NET MVC 3. It works for both ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 and RTM. The tool only supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and MVC 2 projects targeting .NET 4.

It will not work with VS 2008 solutions, MVC 1 projects, or projects targeting .NET 3.5. Those projects will first have to be upgraded using Visual Studio 2010 and/or retargeted for .NET 4.

The tool will:

• Create a backup of your entire solution
• Update all Web Applications and Test projects to reference System.Web.Mvc v3.0
• Add references to System.Web.Helpers.dll and System.Web.WebPages.dll (new libraries required by MVC 3)
• Upgrade web.config files to reference System.Web.Mvc v3.0 and add configuration and settings to support the new Razor view engine
• Add or upgrade JavaScript files that ship with ASP.NET MVC 3 (jQuery 1.4.4, jQuery UI 1.8.7 jQuery Validation 1.7, Microsoft AJAX)
• Add stylesheets and image assets to support jQuery UI

You can download these releases from the links below:

• ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM
• ASP.NET MVC 3 Application Upgrader
   

Main Presentation

Be sure to join us on April 13, 2010 for the John and Jeremy show. John Oswalt and Jeremy Sharp will be taking us on a awesome ride through some of the most talked about content that was presented recently at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas, NV.

Mark your calendars and get ready for the Microsoft Mix Download!

Title: The Microsoft Mix Download

Come hear a download of the latest Microsoft technology news that was announced at the Microsoft Mix 2010 Conference. Topics will include the latest updates on ASP.NET MVC 2, Open Data Protocol (OData), Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET 4, Silverlight 4, and the new Windows Phone 7 Development.

Presenters:

John Oswalt is a Lead Developer/Analyst for Tyson Foods, Inc. based in Springdale, AR and a Microsoft Certified Professional in ASP.NET. He is currently the President of the Northwest Arkansas .NET User Group (@nwadnug). He has over 10 years experience in developing websites and applications. His passions for programming languages include ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, VB.NET, SQL, JavaScript, and many others. He is the owner of a few different types of blogs on the internet (Technology – letsblogabout.net) and (Sports – www.callthehogs.com). You can also follow him on Twitter (@joswalt).

Jeremy Sharp is a graduate of the University of Arkansas in computer science, Jeremy has devoted his entire career to the development of Intranet, Internet and Extranet enterprise business applications for both large and small corporations. Over the last ten years he has worked in a variety of industries, including consumer products, health care, education and transportation. Jeremy's client list comprises many well-known local and national names, including Tyson Foods, Arkansas Occupational Health Care, North West Technical Institute and J.B. Hunt.

When:

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764

Room: Kansas Room (226)

Microsoft released a Hotfix to accompany the new jQuery VSDoc file.  The Hotfix is now available at the MSDN Code Gallery.  Here's a direct download link for this small (2MB) patch:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB958502/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1736

This patch is intended for all JavaScript files, not just those related to jQuery.  Generally, Visual Studio will opportunistically look for documentation files related to the script file.  For example, given "mylibrary.js", we will search in the same directory for:

mylibrary-vsdoc.js, then if we don't find it we will search for...
mylibrary.debug.js, then if we don't find it we will search for...
mylibrary.js

This Hotfix is targeted at the latest public Visual Studio release, which today is VS2008 SP1.  If you're using VS2008 you will need to upgrade to SP1 before taking advantage of this patch.
 

Microsoft Corp. today provided the first look at the next version of its developer tools and platform, which will be named Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. Microsoft described the next release through the following five focus areas: riding the next-generation platform wave, inspiring developer delight, powering breakthrough departmental applications, enabling emerging trends such as cloud computing, and democratizing application life-cycle management (ALM).

Today’s announcement included an in-depth look at how Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 (code-named “Rosario”) will help democratize ALM with a unique solution that brings all the members of a development organization into the application development life cycle, and removes many of the existing barriers to integration. Additional details on the other focus areas will be disclosed over the product development cycle.

“With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, we are focused on the core pillars of developer experience, support for the latest platforms spanning client, server, services and devices, targeted experiences for specific application types, and core architecture improvements,” said S. “Soma” Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. “These pillars are designed specifically to meet the needs of developers, the teams that drive the application life cycle from idea to delivery, and the customers that demand the highest quality applications across multiple platforms. You can expect to hear a lot more about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 in the coming months.”

You can read an overview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 by clicking here.

As you may have heard from Scott Guthrie or Scott Hanselman, Microsoft announced that it will make jQuery part of the official dev platform. JQuery will come with Visual Studio in the long term, and in the short term it'll ship with ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft will also ship a version of Visual Studio which includes Intellisense.

jQuery is a lightweight open source JavaScript library (only 15kb in size) that in a relatively short span of time has become one of the most popular libraries on the web. You can read John Resig's (jQuery Team) post about this big announcement.

A big part of the appeal of jQuery is that it allows you to elegantly (and efficiently) find and manipulate HTML elements with minimum lines of code.  jQuery supports this via a nice "selector" API that allows developers to query for HTML elements, and then apply "commands" to them.  One of the characteristics of jQuery commands is that they can be "chained" together - so that the result of one command can feed into another.  jQuery also includes a built-in set of animation APIs that can be used as commands.  The combination allows you to do some really cool things with only a few keystrokes.